NEWGARDEN PICKS UP ANOTHER TOP 10 FINISH FOR CFH RACING IN LONG BEACH

Seventh Place Result Is Newgarden’s Best Career Finish In The Streets Of The California City; Filippi Finishes 22nd After Early Issue

(LONG BEACH, Calif.) April 19, 2015 – Race Recap

– Josef Newgarden finished 7th in today’s Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, his best career finish in four starts. This was the 41st year of the storied event.

– Newgarden started the race from the 6th position and was able to pass Ryan Hunter-Reay heading into Turn 1 of the first lap. The Nashville, Tenn. native kept the No. 67 Hartman Oil Chevrolet in 5th position up to second round of pit stops. During his stop on Lap 54, he lost valuable seconds when he had to wait to be clear of the car one pit stall in front of him. He cycled out of the pits in 7th, where he would stay for the remainder of the event.

– Luca Filippi finished 22nd after the car’s safe mode was unexpectedly activated early in the race, causing the No. 20 to lose power. The Italian was attempting to make an early pit stop on Lap 6, during the first and only caution of the 80-lap event, when car shut off at the entrance to the pit lane. The Fuzzy’s Vodka crew was forced to retrieve the car and push it back to the pit box. The team was then able to successfully re-fire the engine, but Filippi had unfortunately lost two laps to the leaders. He was able to finish the race without further complications.

– This was Filippi’s first time to race in the Streets of Long Beach, Calif. and was his third start with CFH Racing. He started today’s race from the 14th position, his best qualifying effort of the season.

– Newgarden has moved up to 9th in the Verizon IndyCar Series point standings with 66 points. Filippi is now 15th overall with 50 points.

– CFH Racing heads to the outskirts of Birmingham, Ala. next weekend for the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park. The race will take place next Sunday, April 26.

JOSEF NEWGARDEN, NO. 67 HARTMAN OIL CHEVROLET, FINISHED 7TH: “It was definitely a decent result. Our guys have been working hard and it’s nice to get some consistent results over the last couple of races. Obviously we wanted to be higher. I tried to get by Montoya after that first stop and got into the rubber on the outside of Turn 10. I picked up a lot of debris on the tires and it took me a long time to clean it up. I lost a lot of time to the leader and fell into the clutches of Bourdais and Kanaan and never got back away from them. We had a little bit of trouble in the pit stop as we had to wait for Graham and after that we lost out to Tony and Sebastian. We came home seventh, so it’s disappointing that we didn’t reach our potential. We are pushing hard at CFH Racing, we’ve got a really strong group and we’re close to knocking on the door. We will come back for the next round in Barber and try and one up these guys!”

LUCA FILIPPI, NO. 20 FUZZY’S AWARD WINNING VODKA CHEVROLET, FINISHED 22ND: “We were going to pit under the first caution, but I had an alarm and the engine switched to safe mode. The engine shut down at that point, so I lost power. The team had to fire the engine up and reset the system in order to restart the car. We lost two laps to the leaders so we had to drive around ourselves, trying to avoid contact and the other cars as to not to ruin their race. It’s a shame because for most of the race we were one of the fastest cars on track. We had probably the best pace on the red tires so it would have been interesting to see what we could have done. At least it was a good practice for us to find a good rhythm. Hopefully next week in Barber we can start with the performance we were capable of today.”

brie.rentz 20 Apr, 2015 0 comment News